


Equinox

by darkstar1013



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 04:48:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18242699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkstar1013/pseuds/darkstar1013
Summary: Solo comforts Gaby on the first day of a cold spring after they learn Illya's not coming back.





	Equinox

Equinox  
by Darkstar

(A moment for Solo)

The woman in the blue scarf feeds ducks by the pond at the foot of the hill.

Daffodils are in bloom.

Her white hands flash into her pocket and out with handfuls of birdseed like she's drawing a gun. Flings it out, away from her. 

Napoleon watches this from the bench at the top of the hill. The ripped pages of the debrief flutter around his feet in the spring breeze, half-flown birds, but he hasn't bent to pick them up yet. Let the wind take them. Let them be scattered. No one but himself and the woman in the blue scarf would understand the [redacted] regrets-to-inform-you that Agent Illya Kuryakin was tried and convicted of [redacted} and sentenced to [redacted] on [redacted.] Gaby ripped the pages so thoroughly that the words were just bits, like someone had smashed a typewriter and dumped the pieces onto the page.

When he himself first read the debrief, he put together a very small suitcase filled with very deadly things and spent two hours trying to convince Waverly to get him into Russia. It could be a bluff. It could be a misunderstanding. It could be a lie. Ilya was valuable. A custom-made weapon. The Russia he knew didn't waste weapons. He had to be in the gulags, somewhere, and with some false papers and a hell of a lot of bribe money he could be found, brought back...

Waverly said he'd seen the body.  
He'd gone, already, to bargain. As soon as they'd heard of the arrest. He'd left at once and had already been too late.

"Why?"  
"They decided he was compromised."  
The words seeped into Solo and he knew. "Gaby?"  
Waverly nodded. "But she won't know that. I'm going to have my people redact the hell out of this report by the time she reads it, and you're going to tell her it was a mission that went wrong and he took the fall to protect his men. It's going to be very noble. And absolutely nothing to do with her."  
"She's smarter than that."  
"Don't underestimate your skills as a liar, Solo."  
"You think I'm going to be the one to sell that to her?"  
"Absolutely." Waverly said. "Because you care the most that she buys it. And she needs to buy it."

He doesn't know why he drove her to the duck pond.  
She's not a little girl.  
She doesn't need a balloon and an ice cream to feel better, although he could imagines the balloon might be useful anyway. He could tie it around her waist and it'd take her somewhere warmer and softer.

He watches her, blue scarf against the blue water under the blue sky.  
Damnit, Illya, he thinks, Damnit. It was always supposed to be you who made it out in the end. We had a plan. You take the girl, I take the sunset, everyone happy every after. You damn Russian.

She's running out of birdseed. He's going to have to walk down the hill and say something to her. She flings the last fistful right as he reaches the edge of the pond, the hard brown pellets hurtling out over the glass-blue water onto an indignant mallard. 

"You're going to put its eye out." He said. "Are you trying to feed them or hunt them?" 

"If they are dumb enough to get hit, I hope it hurts." She says. She rubs her hands together, shakes off the residue of the seeds. "They are stupid birds."

"I was always partial to pigeons myself." He says. Pulls his coat closer as the wind slices across the water. "It's cold for all this blue sky."

"Today is the equinox." She says. "The turning point into spring. From here on out, things are supposed to thaw. To live. That's why they had to shoot him quickly. It was still the death-time. Bastards."

"Gaby--"

"If it were still winter, I could go to him. The gate would be open. But it's shut. Damn ducks. Damn daffodils. Now I have to stay here. Now I have to live."

Solo calculates how many drinks she needs to stop this talk, which scares him because she takes these things seriously, like Illya did, only Solo does not know how to bring her back from these places. Maybe he should take her to Paris. To Italy. To New York. To a Broadway play or an opera or a yacht sailed out into the blue ocean and he can offer himself like a hard drink at a wake, something to take the edge off, but she would refuse. She'd refuse all of it. 

"Yes." He says. "You have to live."  
He finishes the sentence in his mind: you are the only one of us who must live, who must find something else at the end of this. At all expenses. 

"There's no joy in it," she says. "It's just a line to cross. Not-death. Life."

She shudders, despite her coat. He catches the end of her blue scarf, knots it gently around her neck. Her face and neck are wet. She grabs his hand, suddenly, fiercely, and squeezes so hard his knuckles ache. He drags his thumb across her cheeks, a blessing. A promise.

"Life." He nods. They've both said it, it's a contract now. It's a compact between them. I won't lose her, he promises the dead man. You watch from your side, I'll watch from mine, and pity the bastards who are caught in the middle. We won't lose a hair on her head. 

"Buy me some more feed." she says. "I have ducks to curse."

He half-smiles and walks up the hill again, his back to her, her back to him, but the same line crossed. The equinox. The still point of the turning world.   
And someday, maybe, joy.


End file.
